Today I want you to join me in the marketing time machine and go back a few decades to be a fly on the wall of one of the great marketing lessons of the last 100 years from David Ogilvy.
As a side note, you can skim this email at your own risk.
We will substitute “digital marketer” for the word “copywriters” to give this more context in 2021.
“Most good digital marketers fall into two categories: Poets. And Killers. Poets see marketing as an end. Killers as a means to an end. If you are both a killer and a poet, you get rich.“
Now let’s put some more context into this lesson.
Digital marketers are often relying on tech only to make up for the lack of copy skills.
Everywhere you go online, there is software that promises to shortcut the thing you are the weakest at.
Need funnels made? Press 3 magic buttons and BOOM, you have a working funnel.
Need email and sales copy created that works every time? Just fill in the blanks and presto! You get million-dollar copy created in a flash.
But the problem is we both know it’s not that easy.
If you step back and combine marketing, sales, psychology, data science, and direct response copy, you get the best of a poet and killer.
And in case you are wondering how this all turned out for David Ogilvy, this might help.
He is known as the “Father of Advertising.“
David Ogilvy had just $6,000 in his account when he started his agency.
In a very short time, he built Ogilvy & Mather into the most respected advertising agency in the world.
In 1973, Ogilvy retired as chairman of Ogilvy & Mather and moved to Touffou, his estate in France.
He did very well for himself by being both a killer and a poet.
So what I want to leave you with today is that the key to success is to be both a poet and a killer.
And if you are not this rare combination, the next best thing is to hire these rare unicorns to grow your business.
But be warned. Finding a poet and a killer in the same person will cost you a lot of money, and that’s even if they want to work with you.
So my best advice is to do everything you can to become this unicorn. Google and Facebook offer a number of free classes that are a great jumpstart.
